Action Comics #1019 Review

Super Villain Team-Up

Written By: Brian Michael Bendis

Art By: John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson, Brad Anderson, Dave Sharpe

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: January 29, 2020

Let's head on back to Metropolis to see if Superman will be able to take on the Legion of Doom now that we found out in the previous issue that Leviathan has joined their ranks......... and maybe also find out why Mark Shaw would join a group that wants to destroy the Multiverse....... or why with a big plan to destroy the Multiverse would the Legion of Doom take time to put themselves at risk to recruit Leviathan.  Let's jump into this issue and see if any of these things can be answered.  Let's check it out.

For this issue we bounce around backwards and forwards throughout time and like previous issues we've had this in..... it gets pretty annoying.  The point of this issue though is all about assembling the most dangerous foes of our Man of Steel so that they can finally kill him and begin their quest to...... either fix the world or destroy and remake the Multiverse..... and by most dangerous foes I mean the Legion of Doom, Leviathan and Red Cloud and by the end of this issue, I'm not sure why Leviathan would ever go along with anything that these villains would be about..... besides for maybe killing Superman because our hero does kind of stand in his way, but beyond that I do really hope that our long drawn out walk through Leviathan's tech and Leviathan Island was just a way to set these villains at ease because he plans on double-crossing them because it doesn't feel right for Mark Shaw to side with these maniacs.

The big question for me though is how did Leviathan get all of these wonderful toys because the very stuff that he talks about having gotten from these different organizations when he took them down seem to be the stuff that he used to actually take them down....... and then we have those giant behemoths that would explode into blue light from the actual Event Leviathan that were never discussed again after the first few issues of that event.  I'm getting side-tracked though, what I mean is that we're shown a futuristic society on Leviathan Island and I'm just wondering how our heroes never went back there after going toe to toe with Mark Shaw........ or how any of this is going down at the same time because it doesn't really fit into any decent timeline, but only feels like Brian Michael Bendis wanted to force his villain into what the Legion of Doom have been up to whether it actually fit or not.

All in all, there's a lot of people talking in this issue, but like usual Brian Michael Bendis titles, there's very little to say and by the end of the issue we just come down to the idea that everyone wants to kill Superman....... and for some reason Red Cloud thinking she wasn't allowed to before, even though it seemed after Lex's offer that's just what she planned to do.  The art in this issue is extremely lackluster and I hope that we get a different artist on this title so that I could at least have that to look forward to because there's very little story to this and at the end of the day..... I just want more of something because there's just no substance to this title right now.

Bits and Pieces:

We have the meeting of the villains this issue and while I usually love situations like this, there really isn't anything going down here besides for the group consensus, "Superman bad" and even with that, it feels odd that Leviathan would join up with anyone like the Legion of Doom.  On top of that, the art is disappointing and I would just like more of anything out of this title because right now it feels like I get nothing issue to issue.

3.5/10